On Fri­day, I took the chil­dren to the CHEC (Chris­t­ian Home Edu­ca­tors of Col­orado) office to fin­ish up a lit­tle bit of work in prepa­ra­tion for our state con­fer­ence. The kids love going there since Dad works there. And they have candy and soda.

And Dad always says yes…

Or so they tell me. As they are walk­ing past me on the way to ask Dad some­thing. With a skip in their step.

Any­way.

So, while I was work­ing and they were keep­ing busy with var­i­ous tasks like fold­ing fly­ers and such, Faith got her hands on a lit­tle home­school comic book. She spent some time read­ing the comics.

Fast for­ward to Sat­ur­day morning.

I was on the ellip­ti­cal try­ing to get my blood pump­ing a bit before I started the marathon of a day. {Not a lit­eral marathon in case you mis­read that sen­tence. That would be seri­ously funny for those who know me in per­son. I am NOT a runner.}

Faith approached me and started talk­ing. She obvi­ously had been mulling over something.

“Mom? I was read­ing a Chris­t­ian comic book yesterday.”

Me, pant­ing, won­der­ing why this con­ver­sa­tion has to take place at this par­tic­u­lar moment, but real­iz­ing that it is weigh­ing heavy on her heart.

“Yes, Faith?”

“Well, Mom, it seems like all they do is mock non-Christians.”

I asked her for a clar­i­fi­ca­tion, and she gave me some exam­ples. Things that prob­a­bly would have flown right under my radar of mock­ing, but she was dead on. I asked her if some­one had talked to her about this, and she said that nobody had.  So, she fig­ured this out all on her own.

And she was right. I stopped my exer­cis­ing for the moment. Seri­ously stunned by her per­cep­tion. She’s a brand new 7. I’m slightly older than that. And she gets what I so often over­look. In our humor, do we mock what oth­ers just don’t have eyes to see? Are we insen­si­tive to the fact that God maybe hasn’t opened their eyes to see Truth? Do we take it for granted as though we some­how fig­ured it out all on our own?

I told Faith that she is right, that we shouldn’t mock oth­ers, even those who don’t know Christ. We need to love them and show them Christ, that we need to be care­ful with our speech. I’m sure all of the comics weren’t of a mock­ing nature. I’m pretty sure some of them were funny in their own right, not at the expense of a non-Christian. But I got the point.

And then I went upstairs to share this with my hus­band who was equally stunned by her per­cep­tion. God has been so mer­ci­ful to us. Let us show that mercy to oth­ers. And stop the mock­ing. Even if we think we’re just being funny. It’s really no joke.